Austria-Hungary

15cm Autokanone M.15/16

The Skoda 15cm Autokanone M.15/16 was to replace the obsolete the 15cm Belagerungskanone M.1888, but when war broke out the design was still on paper, but development was hurried, and in 1915 the first prototype could be tested. Due to the pressing needs caused by the war, the testing was hurried as well, and the result was a not too perfect gun. The gun emerged as a big, rather akward-looking, heavy thing that had to be broken down into two loads (barrel and carriage) to be transported, even though the gun from the outset was designed as a “Autokanone”, that is, a gun that was to be towed by motorized tractors, like the Austro-Daimler Artilleriezugwagen M.17. The pure artilleristic performace was no too bad, though. It could fire a 56kg heavy standard shell with a muzzle velocity of 700 m/sec up to a range of some 21km. The rate of fire was low: one shell per minute, and the on-carriage traverse was limited: 6° to either side. It weighed 11.9tons emplaced, 16.4 tons when in movement mode. Hardly surprising, it required a crew of 13. My model is made from Il Principe Nero's stunningly good resin kit, and has been built straight out of the box. The crew comes from HÄT's Austrian Heavy Weapons Set. Click on the thumbnails to see more views of this model:

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